Bakura and Ryou: A Short Reflection
by ShooTheOtherGuy
Summary: This is simply a short, manga-based reflection in both Bakura's and Ryou's perspective during the time Ryou was building the shadow RPG board. The POV's alternate. No romance. Rated T because I just like that rating.


**Hey guys! This is ShooTheOtherGuy, well and alive with my first Yu-Gi-Oh! story.**

**This is just a short reflection I randomly decided to do based on Ryou and Bakura when Ryou was building the shadow RPG board. Sorry if I got any details wrong, I simply wrote it on a whim.**

**For those of you who got this notification from following me and are fans of**

**_The Clock Spins Faster_, fear not! I will eventually update that story! Emphasis on eventually! I haven't given it up, don't worry. I was even reading it the other day.**

**My secret motive for writing this reflection was to PROMOTE!**

**I recently started a Tumblr, an ask blog. It's based on Evil Bakura. I have posted one intro picture on there, and another is soon to come. I would appreciate it if all you fans of Bakura who have Tumblr follow me and ask questions!**

** Thanks guys!**

**The link is as follows: .**

**I'll let you read now, and I hope you enjoy the story :)**

* * *

Grains of modeling sand trickled to the floor, and the sound of Ryou's mumbled complaints echoed in the empty room in Domino museum where he was working. His foot brushed up against the ever growing pile of sand by his feet, sticking to his shoes and spreading around the rest of the room as he moved around.

He could never understand why he had suddenly felt an interest in building an Egyptian RPG board, but was glad that his father allowed him to. After all, building these boards was quite expensive, but he felt special building it for the Egyptian section of his father's museum, whether it was in game form or not. Nevertheless, he continued his way around the room to fill the bucket he was holding with more modeling sand, cursing under his breath once more as sand trickled to the floor again. He glanced from the bucket back to the floor and back again before carelessly stepping in the sand as he made his way back to the table. The clean-up could wait until the end.

As he poured more modeling sand onto the half-finished RPG board, his eyes wandered around the room until they landed upon a lone figurine he had created some time ago, resting on a lopsided clay rock he had tossed onto the table when he remembered that he needed to fill the board with sand first. The figure vaguely resembled Ryou himself, if not for the tan skin, the shorter hair and the muscular build. It was the first thing he had created out of some unknown whim that he had. He always did love incorporating himself into his board games (his mind quickly skimmed over the white mage he had created quite some time ago) and figured if he ever happened to have an Egyptian counterpart, he would look something like the figure that rested on the table. It also made him feel special, knowing many people would come to the museum to see this board and he liked having a component of himself in it.

He frowned as he acknowledged a thought floating around his mind, his eyes never leaving the table where the two objects sat. Something was heavily bothering him, but he couldn't quite grasp it. His gaze flitted between the clean, spotless face of the Egyptian man meant to be Ryou himself and the rock, trying to figure out what was off.

His eyes scrunched up into slits as he stared at the objects, until the soft sound of falling sand had stopped and there was no more weight in his hands.

His eyes widened again as he realized what was off. It was only a whim, but...that was it! He placed the now empty bucket to the side of the board and rushed over to sit in the comfy swivelling chair that rested in front of the table and immediately reached for his tools.

That rock would never be lopsided again, and Ryou was sure that a grey-brown would look better than the simple grey it was now.

* * *

Bakura watched as his host hunched over a measly rock, painting, repainting, shaping and reshaping it to perfection. He would have been slightly irritated at the obsessive tendencies, but figured it was good that the white-haired boy was paying such close attention to detail.

After all, his shadow RPG game had to be perfect, and with as good a memory as he had, even he was sure that that rock was definitely a greyish-brown.

He spent quite some time like this, merely watching his host work. After all, he had been prodding at Ryou's conscious, nudging the boy for days to finally ask his Father to build the damn thing and the boy had finally gotten around to doing so. Who was he to interrupt Ryou's good, albeit very slow progress with the board? It wasn't like he had anything else to do in the time it took to build the board.

However, while watching Ryou's insistent progress on the rock he grew gradually annoyed. The Thief King had definitely had a scar on one side of his face, and he knew that his host's perfectionism would stop him from putting it there.

Although he loathed admitting it, he DID pick up quite a few traits from his host throughout the years, one of them being an interest in the RPG's and another, the one that burdened him now, was his obsessive need to have the game pieces perfect.

He took slight control of Ryou's right hand as his host held a particularly sharp tool, mumbling something about "that perfect dent" or the other, and twitched the hand a bit so that the tool cut a nice clean gash into the figure of the Thief King instead of hitting its original target: the useless rock. It cut a beautiful scar right through the thief's right eye. He released control immediately after the deed had been done. After all, he wouldn't want his dear landlord becoming suspicious of his presence. Despite what others thought, his host could be pretty stubborn when he wanted to be, and if the boy had realized he was being used then he would refuse to build the board. It wouldn't have exactly been a problem, for Bakura could easily take over or even threaten the boy, but Ryou was the only one who could build the game and Bakura needed his full cooperation.

Now satisfied, he left his landlord sobbing about his "perfect little doll all ruined" and backed off a bit, preferring to think about the events to come. He sent Ryou's gaze around the room and to the board so he could glance at the broken village that was gradually becoming the ruins of Kul Elna, the thief's village.

The massacre at Kul Elna...had it not occurred, none of the events that had been conspiring would have happened. He frowned (as much as a spirit without a physical body could frown) and tried to recall everyone he knew of, besides those in the past, who knew of what had happened.

The annoying mut, Joey? The vessel of the Pharoah, Yugi? The others who tag along with them, Tea and Tristan? No...none of them knew. Not even the GREAT Pharoah himself knew of the massacre.

His naive little host didn't even know, didn't even hesitate when he built the remains of the village.

Was he the only one aware of the massacre?

His frown turned into a grim line before morphing into a dry smile. Of course he was. He was the only one who knew of the past, the present and, if all went well, even the future.

He was practically a God, and Gods kept many secrets from their people.

* * *

Ryou was almost in tears. He had spent hours on simply making that one figure, and had clumsily cut a scratch into it. He had no idea how he had done it. After all, he had a very steady hand and almost never ruined his creations. After spending a good twenty minutes berating himself and staring off into the board, he shook his head and tried to reverse the damage. Right now, he was frantically trying to pour plaster into the crack to fill it in, but all that succeeded to do was set the crack in stone.

He stopped for a minute and took a step back, studying the wound over.

Well, it didn't look too bad, he concluded after a long moment of staring. In fact, the more he looked at it the more he liked it.

He tried to ignore the fact that he sounded like he was trying to convince himself and instead tried to make the cut look cleaner. He gave it a slightly lighter colour than the skin and set the figure aside to dry before turning his attention back to the board.

He was fairly happy with his progress so far, albeit all he had done was pour some sand on the board and start to build a palace and a village, the latter of which he had half buried with the modeling sand. He walked around it, simply admiring the whole thing for a minute and to get his mind off of the first figure. The white-haired boy's hand first brushed across one wall of the palace, feeling the texture and admiring the colour.

Ever since he began to build the palace, he wondered who he would make king. Ryou loved to model his figures after his friends or people he knew, and was conflicted on whom to make the king. He had constantly thought about making it himself, but didn't like the almost narcissistic feeling it gave him, so scratched that idea.

Perhaps he would make it his father? Yet somehow he knew that his father wouldn't like to be the center of attention, so didn't consider it further.

His thoughts went to Kaiba, the big CEO of Kaiba Corporation. He WAS technically a king of some sorts, what with all the fame and money and all. Ryou turned his head this way and that, trying to visualize the CEO on the throne he had finished creating. Somehow, the image just didn't sit well with him. Kaiba always was some sort of jerk in everyone's eyes (though Ryou thought he was a pretty good guy. He DID try to save his brother, after all) and Ryou liked to think that all kings were kind hearted and loved by their people.

He thought back to his friends, all the while looking sideways at the castle in some vain attempt to visualize someone there. The king should be unique, stand out. He thought a little harder, his mind set only on kings.

King of the world, king of a country, of a corporation, of a school, of people, of games...

King of games! Yugi!

Ryou mentally slapped himself. Of course, why didn't he think about it before? You couldn't miss Yugi with his hair, his personality, his kindness, his _friendship_...he was the perfect candidate for king.

Satisfied with his decision, the white-haired boy continued around the board, running a finger on the edge of it as he moved to the side where the village was.

When he first built the village, he built it without hesitation. His father had told him about some Egyptian ruins and he had decided to include it in his board. Now, however, he felt a very unsettling feeling from it. Why was anybody's guess, but the feeling was so strong that Ryou couldn't ignore it.

It seemed the longer he stared at the village the more unsettled he felt. Ryou didn't like the feeling at all. He felt like he needed to run away, or fight, or destroy, and felt mixed feelings like anger, sadness, revenge and...a strange sort of happiness, satisfaction. All his celebratory feelings about having chosen the king were gone by now, and he couldn't seem to tear his gaze from the village.

All of a sudden the feeling stopped, and Ryou was left looking strangely at the board.

Perhaps he was working too hard, he thought lamely. Ryou reached out to brush some sand off the roof of a particularly crumbled building on the outskirts of the village and tilted one of the straighter-looking houses to give it a rundown effect before he left that side of the board, choosing instead to finish building the palace. It always did make him feel safe.

He soon forgot about the village entirely and would never remember those feelings again.

* * *

The spirit simply sat slightly annoyed at himself for a minute or two, trying to compose himself. The moment he had felt Ryou's confused emotions on Bakura's own exposed ones, he had tried to calm himself down and break the connection.

This happened from time to time when he got too excited or too angry while still in Ryou's subconscious, but it was now more than ever that he needed to shield his emotions from his nosey little host. If Ryou began to make a connection between those unknown feelings, the village and himself, then that would definitely not be a good thing.

Bakura sighed inwardly. He had been thinking too much about the past, and with the taste of victory on his tongue he had almost forgotten that he still had a plan to follow and had not quite won..._yet._

So yes, sometimes his emotions got a..._little_ out of hand, but it was nothing more than he could handle, he reassured himself. Calm now, he wiped all thoughts about Kul Elna, the massacre and his long-term plan from his mind and focused on the present situation and his landlord's progress.

Ryou was currently working on the palace, a slight smile on his face. It made Bakura frown rather than smile with him. After all, he never liked the palace. It, along with the Pharaoh and all his men, were only out to defeat him. Nothing more, nothing less.

What a petty little threat compared to what he could do now.

Though, not all of it was bad. If nothing of the past had happened the way it did, he wouldn't even exist. Not like this.

Oh well, he thought while watching his host construct another wall. No matter how it had happened, here he was. Bakura had the world right in the palm of his hand and he wasn't about to let go.

He had to hand it to his host, though. He had followed Bakura's every whim to perfection, albeit with a few...annoyances. This is why Ryou was the destined host for the final battle, Bakura thought with a sharp laugh. He had been quite useful, although his time as Bakura's tool was coming to a close.

He pulled back a bit more, still watching his host work. It was interesting to see how the pieces of destiny—_his_ ultimate destiny- were coming together. His naive host didn't know that every little piece, every little whim was destiny at work. Ryou believed that he himself was choosing the king, the look of the palace, the look of the Thief, of the village, of the board, but in reality the path was already laid out in front of him. It was quite satisfying to see everything go his way. The Pharaoh and his annoying friends didn't suspect a thing.

It was almost too easy. Bakura had expected more of a challenge.

He settled in and smirked, staying this was until the board was finished.

The time had almost arrived. 

* * *

It was almost a week later when Ryou had stepped into that room for the last time. He had a sort of half smile on his face, happy to have finished the board but sad to have completed it at the same thing. The white-haired boy really did enjoy building it. He walked around the board to look at it for a final time before his Father had people remove it soon.

Ryou looked around the board. Yugi, in the form of a Pharaoh, sat on the throne of the palace. He even decided to include Kaiba after all, by Yugi's side in the palace. Ryou had placed himself somewhere in the desert that he had created, right next to his beautifully perfect greyish-brown rock. Every grain of sand was in its right place, every bit of dust in the village, every person in the smaller villages and every sparkle on the palace. It was perfect.

As Ryou stared at his creation and smiled happily, Bakura hid behind him and smiled darkly.

They were both thinking the same thing.

It was time.


End file.
